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Real-time Advanced Analytics: The Time Is Now

To make the fullest use of your data, next-generation platforms and solutions should support the analysis of transactional information as events occur, without the latencies that arise when extracting data from data warehouses in order to run analytics. This is the idea behind real-time advanced analytics—a concept enabled by the latest generation of the Intel Xeon processor, writes Pat Buddenbaum of the Datacenter Group at Intel.

As the data deluge grows, there is an urgent need for businesses of all sizes to have a corporate data strategy in place - spanning the IT infrastructure, the line of business and CxO office, and the data scientists that bridge the business-statistics-technology gap. The opportunity for IT is significant, helping shift from a cost center to a profit center, but only if the processes and tools that help your organization access, analyze, govern, and share information quickly and efficiently are put in place.

Everyone knows there is a competitive advantage for those who can gain immediate insights from the data but that's nearly impossible using yesterday's computing platforms and software tools to create and manage the haystack, let alone finding the proverbial needle in said haystack.

There are a variety of analytic methods depending on the needs of the problems being solved - whether running complex analytic solutions over a period of hours and days, using batch or offline analytics where data is grouped and analyzed at convenient points in time, or real-time advanced analytics.

To make the fullest use of your data, you need the latest-generation platforms and solutions that allow you to analyze transactional information as events occur, without the latencies that arise when you have to extract data from data warehouses in order to run analytics. This is the idea behind real-time advanced analytics-solutions built by the software community on the latest Intel Xeon processor platforms.

In-Memory Computing Facilitates Real-time Analytics

The new Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 product family is designed to make data more valuable for your business through in-memory computing - one of the more recent advances in data management and analytic solutions, which stores the entire data set in main memory rather than traditional hard disk storage. In-memory database and analytics solutions enable significant performance gains in analyzing complex and diverse datasets. We're talking about analysis in seconds or minutes rather than hours or days. This is how you get to real-time insight.

In-memory architecture represents a major milestone for large-scale IT systems. In addition to driving orders-of-magnitude improvement in performance, it enables the development of all-new applications. This change in the way data is stored will have a big impact on your enterprise applications and, ultimately, on the way you run your business. It's not a reach to say that real-time analytics will drive business transformation by enabling faster decisions, better decisions, new insights, and customized products and services. It all adds up to a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

A platform built for mission-critical applications All of that said, let's not miss the forest for the trees-the advances in the platform don't stop at in-memory technology. If you take a step back and look at the platform more broadly, you'll see that the E7 v2 family supports mission-critical applications on many levels: leadership performance, world-class reliability and uptime, and the scalability to handle any workload. The platform delivers up to 2X average performance gain, 3X more memory capacity, and 4X I/O bandwidth vs. the previous generation, and is designed for five 9s reliability.

This is a platform built with data integrity in mind-a key concern for mission-critical applications. As your applications move to in-memory computing, you want to have the confidence that bits won't get flipped and turn a $375 transaction into a $3.75 sale. The platform helps avoid such threats through the use of Intel Run Sure Technology, which increases both data integrity and system uptime.

An Ecosystem Effort

This isn't a platform we built in isolation. In developing this next generation of processor, we worked closely with our ecosystem of software partners. They are designing their applications to take advantage of the platform's advanced architecture, including in-memory computing.

Our software partners are excited about the new processor for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that it will allow them to continue to evolve their mission-critical applications to take advantage of the latest x86 innovations. The platform will facilitate and accelerate their ongoing evolution away from proprietary UNIX platforms and into the world of open systems based on Linux and Windows operating systems.

Let's Focus on the Bigger Issues

All of this should give you the confidence that you have a platform that is ready to run your mission-critical applications-such as online transaction processing-that require 24x7x365 availability. This level of confidence, in turn, allows you to focus your concerns on bigger issues-like using real-time advanced analytics to enable a transformation in the way you leverage your data and run your business.